Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to electronic devices, and more particularly to portable electronic devices with fingerprint sensors.
Background Art
Mobile electronic communication devices, such as mobile telephones, smart phones, gaming devices, and the like, are used by billions of people. The owners of such devices come from all walks of life. These owners use mobile communication devices for many different purposes including, but not limited to, voice communications, text messaging, Internet browsing, commerce such as banking, and social networking. The circumstances under which users of mobile communication device use their devices varies widely as well.
As these devices become more sophisticated, they can also become more complicated to operate. Designers are constantly working to find techniques to simplify user interfaces and operating systems to allow users to take advantage of the sophisticated features of a device without introducing complicated control operations. For example, some electronic devices are now being equipped with biometric sensors, one example of which is a fingerprint sensor. Rather than requiring a user to go through a series of steps, such as entering a personal identification number sequence, to unlock an electronic device, a user simply touches or otherwise interacts with a biometric sensor to identify themselves to the device. Biometric sensors thus simplify device operation by replacing a series of several steps with a simple touch operation. Such sensors also make it unnecessary to memorize a passcode,
While the inclusion of devices such as biometric sensors can simplify complicated control operations, they are not without issues of their own. For example, they can consume large amounts of power when not in use. It would be advantageous to have an improved system having a biometric sensor, yet with reduced power consumption for extended battery life.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.